Nothing\u00a0more justifies trimming back public comments at Fort Worth City Council meetings quite like one\u00a0gentleman\u2019s\u00a0rant last month.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
He devoted the last part of\u00a0this remarks\u00a0to haranguing Mayor Mattie Parker for mispronouncing a Pan-Asian surname and patting himself on the back for living out his Jesuit upbringing in social justice by \u2014 haranguing the mayor for mispronouncing a Pan-Asian surname.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
I\u2019m\u00a0one of them rum Romanists, too, and I must have missed the part about social justice as a vanity project. I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0recall Christ\u2019s edict to perform works of mercy so you can paste it all over social media as a way of pronouncing, \u201cHow great I am.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Loving self over neighbor, in fact, was the last thing Christ had in mind, as I recall it.\u00a0It\u2019s\u00a0true, no one will mistake me for a theologian, though the decree of he who is without sin shall hurl the first stone like a Nolan Ryan fastball in the backside is all too familiar.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Well, this all came to mind because of the council decision in recent months to reduce the length of public comments and the uproar from the activists over this \u201canti-democratic\u201d reform from council members and, clearly, a mayor with tyrannical ambition.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The whole episode brought back my first lesson in representative democracy. People are\u00a0elected\u00a0to\u00a0represent\u00a0the masses. \u201cSo, if you have something to bitch about, you go bitch to \u2019em,\u201d my fifth-grade teacher instructed. \u201cAnd really let \u2019em\u00a0have it. The ship has sailed on being friendly as a way of making friends.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the 21st century, there are any number of ways to\u00a0get in touch with\u00a0your city\u00a0councilman\u00a0or even your state or federal representative. A phone call or email probably\u00a0serve\u00a0as the best\u00a0ways. You can send off a hurried missive full of\u00a0invective. You\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0even have to wait for the next council meeting. Just let it loose. Hit Send.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
None of that, however, will get you a video on\u00a0the social\u00a0channels and praise from the social sycophants and\u00a0wanna-be politicos.\u00a0<\/p>\n
So, this charged debate one evening reached a fevered pitch when Ms. Patrice Jones, a noted rabble-rouser, said the council should reconsider its wayward, harebrained policy because they\u00a0can\u2019t\u00a0get enough attention.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you guys make it harder for us to talk to y\u2019all in spaces like this, then we\u2019re just going to have to come to spaces where you are and make it uncomfortable,\u201d Jones said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was at this\u00a0point\u00a0casket-gate was born. It endures forever.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cPatrice, I still have your casket,\u201d the mayor responded, as if to say that the activists were already infringing on comfortable spaces.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Activists,\u00a0you\u2019ll\u00a0recall, dumped a casket in the mayor\u2019s front yard during the trial of a Fort Worth police officer who was later convicted of murdering Atatiana Jefferson in 2020. The casket had the name \u201cAtatiana\u201d painted on it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Parker says she was merely referring to the fact that the casket\u00a0remains\u00a0with the Fort Worth Police Department as evidence.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The comment, Ms.\u00a0Jones\u00a0and her ride-or-die inner circle, all\u00a0presumably forged\u00a0in activist ire, of course, said the remark represented a threat. That could have \u201cenergized\u201d the\u00a0mayor\u2019s\u00a0base to \u201ccause harm to me,\u201d says Jones.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, as an aside, that begs the question of who that could\u00a0possibly be\u00a0considering Parker is surrounded \u2014 from the left and the right \u2014 by cranks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
But anyway, Ms. Jones\u00a0denies\u00a0she made the drop. Police said there is no evidence Ms. Jones was the driver or occupant of that hearse, even though she acknowledges she wrote a social media post looking for a casket to borrow a week before one just happened to appear in the mayor\u2019s front yard.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s\u00a0the same police whom the activists want to see neutered. It was Parker\u2019s no vote on a proposed police oversight board in 2022 \u2014 considered a slight to minority communities \u2014 that has had the left fielders worked into a froth.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, consider: Parker has been a friend to minority communities in her two-plus terms, centering much of her work on uplifting the historically underserved through economic and workforce development initiatives. She was\u00a0a strong supporter\u00a0of major urban renewal projects, including the Stop Six and Evans and Rosedale revitalizations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Her maternal and infant health initiative specifically targeted ZIP codes with the worst outcomes,\u00a0predominantly a\u00a0minority population. Before and since she was\u00a0elected\u00a0in 2021, she has insisted on education and career pathways to help underrepresented children escape cycles of poverty\u00a0be\u00a0a priority.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Through an initiative called \u201cGood Natured,\u201d she has worked to ensure all residents, especially in historically forgotten areas, had access to quality parks and green\u00a0space.\u00a0<\/p>\n
You got to really want that job of mayor.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If the activists really wanted to punish her,\u00a0they\u2019d\u00a0insist she\u00a0return\u00a0for another term in 2027.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nothing\u00a0more justifies trimming back public comments at Fort Worth City Council meetings quite like one\u00a0gentleman\u2019s\u00a0rant last month.\u00a0\u00a0 He…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":390311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5138],"tags":[5229,5310,13812,7371,7372,13814,19268,12176,13813,358,185830,7453,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-390310","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-fort-worth","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-city-council","10":"tag-civics","11":"tag-fort-worth","12":"tag-fortworth","13":"tag-john-henry","14":"tag-mattie-parker","15":"tag-mayor","16":"tag-people-of-influence","17":"tag-texas","18":"tag-the-reverie","19":"tag-top-story","20":"tag-tx","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-united-states-of-america","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115577389345558945","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=390310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/390310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=390310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=390310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=390310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}